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Little Monster at School
Mercer Mayer's Little Monster at School is the fifth Living Books PC CD-Rom based on the 1978 book and story with Little Critter and other books. It was originally released on a Philips CD-i console platform in early 1994 shortly before Ruff's Bone was released, and on a PC/Mac CD-ROM later that year. Plot The story begins with Little Monster by waking up and getting ready for school today. He arrives along with Grendella, Little Laff, and Yally. Yally is the main focus of the story and is primarily established as a character who is grumpy and unwilling to do much. For instance, he is jealous of struggles of writing how Little Laff is the best counter in the class, thinks pets are icky, and that games are stupid. Mr Grithix reads them the story of Little Monster & the Three People and knows where the map is. Little Monster helps him out, and although sometimes the two eventually become good friends towards the end of the story. Characters *Little Monster *Grendella *Little Laff *Yally *Mr. Grithix * Ms. Verakisser * Little Monster's Mom * Little Monster's Dad * Little Monster's Older Sister * Little Monster's Baby Brother * Principal * Goof * Giant Pirate * Zipperump-A-Zoo * Kerploppus * Santa Claus Monsterville Locations * Little Monster's House * Little Monster's Elementary School Songs * USA National Anthem Pages *1. Early in the morning, Mom wakes me up and says, "Get up, Little Monster, it's time for school." *2. I put on my overalls and go downstairs to breakfast. Pop says "What will you have this morning, eggs or cereal with milk?" *3. After breakfast, I brush my teeth and get ready to go. *4. Mom walks me to school. *5. We sing a morning song and practiced our letters. *6. Counting comes next. *7. We have pets. *8. We grow plants. *9. We told what we did over the weekend. Yally makes up the most fantastic stories. *10. On nice days lunch time is outside. *11. At recess, we all go to the playground. *12. Mr. Grithix reads us a story of Little Monster and the Three People. *13. Mr. Grithix gets out a map and shows us where our town Monsterville is. *14. We have science class *15. Then we get to make things. *16. Then we had singing, Ms. Verakisser plays the piano. *17. School is over and Little Monster makes a friend with Yally. *18. I put Yally's drawing on my refrigerator. Words in the Pages Eggs Cereal Milk Trivia *The very first edition of this game was originally released for the Philips CD-i prior to being released on any home computers, and is one of the only two games in the entire series (the other being Just Grandma and Me, which was originally released on a Tandy VIS console) to receive a console port. It has a 320x200 resolution, has high-quality audio, and has the following differences from the PC/Mac versions: **The original "Broderbund's Living Books" intro from the first four games (hence this the last game to use this variant of the intro) is used here for the last time, and it's also the first time the intro utilizes the current Living Books theme tune with a new quality to the instrumental music (minus the boing sound effect) but at the same slower tempo as the earlier version of the tune. **There are several sound and graphic differences, including a few animated frames that are missing from the PC/Mac versions. **The main screen of the game uses the title logo from the book cover instead of making a custom version, and the background is a plain yellow screen instead of a book. **As this is a console port version of the game, there is no Quit page. ***The absence of the Quit page would later apply to the Wanderful re-releases of all the games in the series. **There is a new credits sequence that didn't make it into any home computer versions (more on that below). **The game is only in English on this console port. **When cutting between scenes, the transition engine fades transparently into another scene instead of fading to/from black, hence the fading screens are done differently here than in any other game in the series. *This is the first Living Books game to not include any previews options. *While the Philips CD-i version had high audio quality, the PC/Mac versions didn't. *The paper airplane from Arthur's Teacher Trouble makes a return here on Pages 11 and 15. *Like Little Critter in Just Grandma and Me, Little Monster is voiced by Aaron Schlichting, the Living Books founder's son, and later by Teala Dunn. *This is the first and only Living Books game to include a credits animation of a lady doing a voice-over session. However, this credits animation was only included on the Phillips CD-i version and not the Windows/Macintosh computer versions for reasons unknown. **On the Windows/Macintosh computer versions, it was replaced by the Programmer and Music animations, but the Painting one was left intact on all releases. * Strangely enough, in the credits for the PC/Mac versions, at one point when the guy keeps typing on his computer, the following graphic/color errors occurred (the only other game to have this was Arthur's Birthday): ** The computer's wires turned dark blue instead of red. ** After the computer explodes, the guy's white shirt turns blue-green (fixed in V2 of Arthur's Birthday). ** The computer's wires and monitor were also blue green (the ceiling-crash sound effect from the credits in later games was used for the first time without being cut off). ** When the computer's monitor was blinking in front of the guy's face after he lies down on his desk, the shining from the computer's blinking red monitor in front of the guy's face was blue instead of red. * The line "May I have eggs please?" was heard in high quality. The whoosh sound effect was heard in high quality, before it splats (in low audio quality), and the sound of putting the plate on table was heard in high quality. The line "Thank you" was heard in low quality. * You leave the book when Little Monster says, "Well, OK, good-bye." * On the Living Books Samplers, while other Living Books games were usually sorted in the order they were released, this game was placed after Ruff's Bone. This was likely because the producers sorted the game by its PC/Mac release date. * The copyright date for the Philips CD-i says 1993, hinting that the game was put into production that year. * When running this game on CD-i Emulator (which is a payware emulator), there are sound and graphic glitches (which the emulator itself has in general and not just for this game) as follows: ** There is beeping and buzzing in the entire audio except the credits. ** The backgrounds disappear and become plain white backgrounds. ** Several games sprites merge in and become left behind onscreen one after another per animated frame. ** During fading, sometimes the backgrounds display a garbled mess. ** You cannot access the Options page until you allow Read to Me mode play all the way through. If you click on the Options button beforehand during startup (before going into either Read/Play mode), the game will freeze. * The sound effect used for the roof animation on Page 17 is the exact same one used in the 1945 Donald Duck cartoon, The Clock Watcher with the Jack-in-the-box. Quotes Little Monster: Don't be mad, you can count better than me. Yally: I wanted to be the best. Category:Living Books Games Category:Books Category:Living Books games with console port Category:Books based on Living Books Games Category:Mercer Mayer Category:Little monster series